Every man in the room is waiting for my answer. I realize I don’t have a noble one. “Because I realized a long time ago that my father doesn’t give a damn about me. To him, I’m just a meaningless meat bag that he can give to his favorite loyal brother, much like you toss a bone to a dog. This is me taking back my personal dignity.”
***
After tossing and turning for hours, I can’t sleep. So, a little after midnight I end up in the clubhouse kitchen. Cooking alleviates stress for me. I cooked for my father’s whole crew foryears, garlic chicken and pot roast and biscuits at dawn. It’s harder for a busy pair of hands to shake.
The clubhouse pantry is stocked for forty men and nobody’s using flour much these days, so I decide to make homemade biscuits. When I’m elbow deep into the process, it’s the calmest I’ve felt in days.
Jinx’s voice drifts from the doorway. “It smells like my grandmother’s kitchen in here.”
He walks in wearing a T-shirt and sweats. His hair is hanging down around his shoulders and he’s not even wearing his cut. He looks like Jake and I love it so much my eyes begin to tear up.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him. “I hope it’s okay to be in here.”
“Me either. And of course you’re allowed to be here. Cooking is what kitchens are for, right?” He leans against the counter and gazes down at my hand mixing and kneading dough. “That’s a lot of dough. You don’t have to feed the whole clubhouse, you know. Nobody’s makin’ you earn your keep here.”
“I know.” I press the dough flat. “That’s exactly why I want to do it.” I cut a round biscuit and set it on the sheet. “When somebody makes you useful, it’s a chore. When you choose to do it yourself, it becomes an enjoyable hobby.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Sounds like a Jedi mind trick,” he says.
We talk while I work. I tell him about how my mother ran off when I was just a baby. “My father’s method of raising kidswas to set up a rule for every occasion. He’s strict. My brothers acted out but I just fell into line.”
“How long was he in the Hyenas?” Jinx asks.
“All my life. He was just another brother for a long time. Then he became a club officer. And finally, in the last year, he became their club president.”
Jinx talks about how he moved around his whole life and never felt he had a place he could call home. He moved out of his parents’ house young and ended up in the barracks and then couchsurfed for a while before joining the Sons of Rage. He turns his coffee mug in his hands. “I bought my house the week I got out of the military for cash. It took every dollar I had. People thought I was crazy, sinkin’ it all into a place that far out.” He shrugs. “I wanted something that was mine, something no one could ever take away from me. It was the first time in my life I had a door that I could lock.”
I stop working the dough. A door that’s mine to lock. He just handed me the thing I’ve wanted my whole life and come to find out, it’s the one thing he valued most as well. “That’s all I want,” I tell him shyly. “A door that locks so I can feel safe.”
“I know the feeling,” he says. “It also made me wonder why you left my door unlocked the morning you left my house.”
I freeze and the room is so quiet that I can hear the noise of the gas oven. “I’m really sorry I did that, Jinx. It was disrespectful. I was afraid to make a noise.”
“It’s fine. I was never angry about it, just hurt because I thought it meant that you didn’t care about me.”
“No, I was just freaking out and wasn’t careful. I promise that won’t happen again.”
We bake and eat biscuits and then go back to bed. I pull Jinx into my room this time and we cuddle up just to sleep. I lie against his chest and listen to the slow, steady beat of his heart. This is the perfect moment to tell him that I’m carrying his child but don’t want to spoil it. The words are formed and ready and all I have to do is open my mouth. But I don’t because I’m a coward.
Right now, I’m a woman he’s choosing to be with. The second I tell him, I’ll be the woman carrying his child. If I tell him, he will either reject me or everything he feels for me will double, turning into something possessive. He might even turn into one of those guys who will burn the world down to protect his old lady and unborn child. I don’t know if I’m ready to be loved that hard.
I must have drifted off, because I’m woken up by the sound of someone knocking on the door, and a voice calls out, “You awake, brother? Jasper’s called an emergency meeting.”
“Stay and rest,” he murmurs, kissing the side of my head.
“I’ll be right here when you’re finished,” I tell him.
While I’m drowsing, the burner phone I’m using buzzes against the floor where it fell out of my property cut.
I shouldn’t read the text message. Nobody would text my burner phone at two in the morning except my family. I reach for it, too curious for my own good.
The message is short.
Dad knows you’re playing house with the Ragers, baby sister. He’s done waiting. Somebody’s coming to bring you home where you belong. — S
Because it’s a burner phone I’m using there’s no saved caller ID, but I don’t need that to know who it’s from. Spark. He’s the only one that signs his name S and calls me baby sister.
Below the words, a photo begins slowly loading. My blood turns to ice when it finally loads. It’s a picture of me taken from above. I’m wearing the same clothing I wore yesterday. And I’m sitting on the back patio, wearing Jinx’s property cut. My face is just clear enough to be recognizable. I now understand that it was never a matter of if, but when my family came for me.
